


Kept So Close: a Lusus Story

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Family feelings, Lusus in a Jar on the Meteor, M/M, Other, Sadness, Theories, and at first I thought of some cute things, and then some really sad things, because Lusus Day?, headcanons, maybe? - Freeform, my friend and I talked about Gamzee and his lusus on Mother's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 17:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10949703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: When Gamzee Makara first saw his lusus – or a lusus so hilariously like his own it could have been an organic death mask – held tight in a jar on the meteor, the image had seemed like a riddle.  A contradiction, some twisted together wordplay that would end up funny even if it didn’t seem possible and finish with a big “Ta-da!”This had been a restless old goat, after all.  It had felt like this father-beast was everywhere but where Gamzee’d sat waiting for him, sometimes.  Before.  And now he was so, so still.





	Kept So Close: a Lusus Story

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this because of Mother's Day, when my friend CytosineSkald and I talked about how the trolls may have something like a Lusus Day. I hope I didn't forget anything about canon/get too much tangled... Sorry I ramble a lot about Gamzee snapping/his voice changing once he meets Lil Cal. I've just never written all that thinking specifically about GZ's relationship with his lusus before. Sorry if this has already been done! Probably something like it has, given the size of the internet...
> 
> Thanks for reading! :D Have a good day!

When Gamzee Makara first saw his lusus – or a lusus so hilariously like his own it could have been an organic death mask – held tight in a jar on the meteor, the image had seemed like a motherfucking riddle.  A contradiction, some twisted together wordplay that would end up funny even if it didn’t seem possible and finish with a big _“Ta-da!”_  

This had been a restless old goat, after all.  It had felt like this father-beast was everywhere but where Gamzee’d sat waiting for him, sometimes.  Before.  He was always searching, always away some motherfucking place in the royal gory ocean, doing some motherfucking unknowable thing.  Now, that ocean had become so small, smearing all the air around with the smell of salt and formaldehyde.  Now, that wild lusus, sea-goat with a winding-staircase tail looping dizzily through the dark, was bobbing around like pickles in a motherfucking jar.  Goatdad couldn’t have stretched out even if he’d been alive to.  He was finally holding still, so Gamzee could look into his unfocused, clammy eyes.  You know.  From up on a ladder, or something.

Gamzee’s lusus was a specimen.  Somebody’s specimen – not even his own.  The water wasn’t water, either, and it was gloppy dark and green, like sopor dried into skin, into sweatpants.  Bubbles were frozen in it, like carbonation if you stopped time.    

Gamzee and his friends had been exploring their new home, trapped between realities.  Inside a glitch, as Sollux said.  Inside a mistake that shouldn’t exist.  But Gamzee knew, in those quiet, waiting parts of himself, that all Sollux’s noise couldn’t be true.  They were just part of a joke and the punchline hadn’t come yet.  He had tried to pour out his faith, cupping it between his motherfucking soda sticky hands and offering it to his friends like a gift, but they couldn’t feel the depth of it, the pull of it.  Not really.  Gamzee couldn’t get the motherfucking words right.  If Karkat could taste the knowing Gamzee felt – if he could ease into the thought that everything was winding down to the perfect Jack-in-the-Box finale – he wouldn’t have been ripping himself apart like he was that day they first searched their new hallways and computer rooms, ventilation systems and ominous, echoey basements.  Sometimes, Gamzee imagined what it would be like if Karkat would ever let someone balance him out, keep him from beating himself up so bad.  Smooth him down like ruffled meowbeast fur.  Not Gamzee, yet.  He tried and all, but it felt like things were going nowhere fast. 

So Karkat had stormed ahead, and he was kicking over boxes, and yelling about WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS ANY OF THIS SHIT, YOU’D THINK I WOULD’VE GOTTEN RID OF THIS CRAP ALREADY… And Terezi was scribbling on some of the walls in chalk, reworking the corridors into a motherfucking sweet-ass castle… And Kanaya was wondering aloud if the chalk was easily washable...  When Gamzee choked on air, seeing _him_ , seeing his drifting empty lusus.  He stumbled a little, pushing Tavros’s wheelchair.

“Gamzee?  You okay…?  You, uh, cool?” Tavros’s voice was very warm, very low in his chest, when he got comfortable.  Like a buzzing old heater, Gamzee had said once, which he’d thought was sort of romantic.  Tav hadn’t been able to see it, really.  He’d just said, _“And you sound like you’re about to fall asleep.”_

"Yeah, yeah.  Of course, bro,” Gamzee said, shifting in his oversized clown sneakers.  They stuck to his bare feet, even here in the meteor-cold, even strolling slowly behind everybody else so Tavros could tell him about some of Pupa Pan’s lesser known adventures.  Gamzee didn’t really hear himself.  He figured he’d be walking again in just a sec, just needed to calm his motherfucking self right down, just needed to see if this was really _him_.  It was a looped-together tail, and it was bits of ghostly fur drifting like water weeds, and it was so, so huge.  Gamzee scraped out a porthole in the dust of Goatdad’s jar, his long claws clicking, stained green and sugary.  For a moment, his own reflection stared back out through the window, jaw slack, eyes helpless and glassy.  He’d smeared the paint on his lip, somehow.  How the motherfuck had that happened?      

“I wonder, hm…  Gamzee, I wonder if Karkat knew about this, or if this is really your…?  Karkat _did_ use the meteor for ‘ectobiology’ or, you know.  Or whatever it was.  We could ask him.”  Tavros tugged a little on Gamzee’s arm, his fingers warm and blocky, steady in a way Gamzee’s didn’t seem like they could ever be.  Gamzee shivered, and Tavros’s hand jumped away like a spooked animal.  Twofold Messiahs mirthfully damn it all.  As if Gamzee would ever shake Tavros’s hand away on purpose.      

There was a hoof, in the jelly ocean, in the sick-green prison that was a sort of shrine, that was cold to Gamzee’s touch like only a long-dead thing could be.  His lusus had died what felt like a long time ago, it was true, drifting up on the shore like old Faygo bottles, like pirate ships become motherfucking driftwood.  Goatdad had died with Gamzee smoothing down the fur along his nose, Gamzee tasting salt and sweet fizzing purple tears.  He said hello and goodbye in one sputtering sentence, his first one spoken aloud all night.  Water had pooled in hooves just like these hooves here, on the meteor, in another life.   And that water had drifted away, carrying blood just like Gamzee’s to go chill with shipwrecks and treasure troves down in seadweller murder land.  Down where Goatdad had so often wanted to be, whether he’d chosen Gamzee or not.

Sometimes Gamzee thought shit like, _“Well, Goatdad did pick me, when I was just a motherfucking grub.  He must’ve had some kinda mysterious reasons.  You don’t just decide to up and grab a fucking troll, do you?  It’ll come clear in time.”_   Maybe there was something Gamzee’s lusus wanted him to do, or be.  Maybe there was something he was supposed to have been, but wasn’t – didn’t know how, or wasn’t built for, or…

Now, Gamzee would never know why his lusus had wanted him but stayed so far away.  The mysteries had gone with Goatdad’s creaking breath, bubbling out on his own grey beach.  They’d been replaced by new ones, like what exactly a “Bard of Rage” was, and why Karkat hated frog hunting so much when it looked fun as hell.  There was always something to wonder about, in awe or aching loneliness.  Gamzee’s world kept getting bigger.  Now, he had found something almost completely lost, preserved like ancient relics of murdercircuses past.  Corpses smothered in Silly String, for instance.  A plastic squeaky bat still stained with blood, held in a glass case on somebody important’s starship. 

Gamzee scrubbed more dust off the jar, and saw a bent-back seagoat leg.  He peered up and up, farther, and saw a dazed smile his own Goatdad had never truly worn. 

“What the motherfuck’s this motherfucker doing behind so much dust?” he breathed.  Goatdad’s jar was scraped, as if it had been dragged around the meteor’s gaping, enormous corridors.  His wasn’t the only tomb around, either.  Gamzee had noticed, but he hadn’t _noticed_.  Other lusii and chess people, monsters and things that could almost be trolls bent up as if sleeping in weirdly translucent recuperacoons…  All the faces were sunken, caving in and alien.  All their skin was limp and drifting, but they were everywhere.  So many dead things, smuggled into a crack between universes with the very last of all Alternian life.      

“He’s—He’s definitely enormous,” Tavros said.  “Hey, I’m gonna wheel ahead and get Karkat.  It’ll be, you know…  We’ll talk about it, Gamzee.  We’ll get the dust off, or something.”

“Thanks, Tav.  I…”  Gamzee spoke after Tavros had already left.  He glanced around, from his handprints way up in Goatdad’s dust to the smaller jars.  Maybe Tavros’s lusus was here.  Maybe everyone’s was, waiting beneath their feet as they clomped around upstairs claiming rooms and computers.

“Oh yeah,” Karkat had said, later, when he and Tavros came huffing back.  “I was wondering if you’d find that.  I always figured it was for getting everybody’s blood right.  A lusus that would come for a clown like you, to program the smells and shit into the computer…  Or maybe it’s like a backup stock.  Don’t even worry about it – I can see you’re getting all worked up, but just don’t.  It’s unnecessary.  None of these creepy as fuck dead guys have been alive since the game started, far as I know!”

Maybe it was Gamzee’s imagination, but Karkat’s voice sounded almost tender, saying all that.  Almost like he wanted it to go soft and not so judgmental, but he wasn’t sure exactly how.  Sure, Karkat was glancing all suspicious or something up at Gamzee’s lusus, as if the motherfucking old goat might uncoil and lunge for him, smelling the warmth of his cherry-bright blood.  Sure, Karkat drawled sarcastically a little at the idea of Gamzee “getting worked up,” but that was probably just because he was being the big bad leader and plotting an attack on the humans that fucked them over or something.

Gamzee wasn’t completely up to speed with Karkat’s plans, to be honest with you.  He said “You’re probably right, brother,” and “This couldn’t be my motherfucking lusus – we’d’ve had to plan ahead like some kind of divine jestprophets, haha!” and “Kinda looks like the old goat, though.  You know how it is?  Never seen him so motherfucking quiet before.”

Tavros tried to be encouraging, tried to look like he wasn’t a little uncomfortable at the size of Gamzee’s lusus’s crooked fangs.  He asked Gamzee to tell some stories about his old goat, before thinking better of it, before remembering most of those stories would end up sort of sad.  Karkat awkwardly slapped Gamzee’s back – something like a pap, but not like a pap – and barked about how they were all going to regroup upstairs and duel for the best keyboards.  Terezi drew a scribbly dragon on Goatdad’s enormous jar, and Kanaya went all sighing and dramatic about how Terezi’s damn chalks could draw on pretty much anything.

That was all just motherfucking okay.  Right as a rainbow-stinging blood rain, motherfuckers.

It didn’t stop Gamzee from coming back sometimes.  He came back when it was loud upstairs, or when he was running out of pie and feeling his blood fizz with something ancient and strange.  He came back and leaned against that enormous jar, feeling the cold of it, the steadiness of it.  It wasn’t swimming away, or dripping actual troll blood from its mouth.  Gamzee came back on Lusus Day, when he’d used to drag something he’d cooked down to the beach for Goatdad and usually ended up eating it himself.  This time, he brought a horn pile, too, and he slept in the echoey room full of the dead.  When he woke up, his lusus was still there.

It was awful, and it was wonderful, and Gamzee didn’t tell anybody.  Tavros might have known, though.  He said something like, “I always drew cards for Tinkerbull, way back, uh, when, I guess.  Haha, yeah, I guess that’s a pretty cliché thing to say, isn’t it?  I don’t know if they were any good now, the cards, because they all blew up.  But it was reasonably familial.”

“Yeah, bro.  I hear you,” Gamzee had said.

The last time he’d gone back to the jar, gone back to the dark and the ghostly green slime, Gamzee’s world changed.  Or it had _just_ changed, and he was trying on his new mind, his new skin.  There was a voice in Gamzee’s head that wasn’t his own.  No, no.  It was his own real self, brother.  Changed.  Remixed.  Revealed.  It was the messiahs.  It was time unraveling and strange.  It was his new best bro, Lil Cal, because by that point Tavros had kicked the wicked motherfucking shit.  No, no.  No, no, brother, Tavros had _gone_ , and Vriska would pay in a motherfucking trial like the horror-hymns of old, and Gamzee wasn’t just Gamzee anymore.

Sometimes his mind felt like Equius’s voice, screaming ‘ _kneel_ ,’ screaming orders, using words like 'peasantblood' Gamzee had never heard himself say before.  It would be sweeps before Gamzee understood why, understood that his new voice was because of so many souls smashed together as if under pounding, dancing Subjugglator feet, and Equius’s was only one of them.  For that time, though, it would be enough to say that sometimes his mind felt like a screaming stranger he’d never met, but had always sort of known.  Sometimes his mind felt like a vast monster beyond the world, and Gamzee was afraid.

But he didn’t slow down.  He was rage all through, a rage that reached past time and dreams and made the whole world terminal.  Yeah, brother, yeah.

But still, Gamzee had gone to his lusus that wasn’t his lusus, and perched on top of the old goat’s jar in the dark.

Shivering.

Smeared in Tavros’s blood.

Terezi’s shades dying the whole world like Karkat’s own sweet spilled insides. 

Gamzee had gone to his lusus, and Goatdad had held so still, staring ahead, eyes changed by formaldehyde.  His smile was still like another, warmer goat’s might have been.  He looked almost proud, Gamzee thought, shuddering, as he’d climbed up to his new seat above the emptiness.  No, this wasn’t his own lusus, not really.  This was an ectobiology programming motherfucker, Karkat had said.  But he looked proud, he really did, and there were scrunched up lines worn in at the corner of his eyes that might not have been just flaky death.  Gamzee saw it now.  Maybe this was what his lusus had chosen him for, he thought, in a deep, dark place.  Maybe his lusus had wanted him for his new self, for his voices, for his rage.  Would he have come back more if Gamzee had greeted him with corpses?  Would Gamzee have ever been able to do that, before this new self?  He hadn’t wanted to.  He had never wanted this, he remembered, but only a little, then.  But only from far away.

Thinking on it might’ve been enough to break a troll’s heart.

The small ocean filled Gamzee’s head along with everything else, a head worn raw and frayed open by sopor, a head still spinning from the feeling of slicing Tavros’s own head clean off and carrying it under his arm.  Had Gamzee really done that?  He had liked pushing Tavros’s wheelchair, you know.  He had tilted it back into wheelies, as Tavros laughed and reached up to squeeze onto his wrist like he thought he was going to fall.  Gamzee had admired all of Tavros’s Fiduspawn pictures, even when he hadn’t known what the fuck he was even looking at.  They had watched the Fiduspawn Adventures cartoon together – they had rapped about how fucked up it was when Vriska stole Tavros’s headphones, or when Kanaya used the washing machine all day and Tav didn’t have any clean socks.      

Gamzee had tried to be so many things before.  Tried to change for friendship, tried to change for love.  Of course he liked rom-coms, of course he’d type different if Karkat wanted him to.  Of course he’d give up soda if Equius thought he should.  But now the change had finally come for him, the real change.  And there, balanced on top of a corpse-jar, trapped in a glitch-world and hunted by his friends, Gamzee’s lusus finally held him.

Haha.  Get it?  It’s another motherfucking joke!

But it wasn’t what Gamzee’d ever had in mind, to be real with a motherfucker.


End file.
